Chapter 13: No More Private Ballrooms
That night, I let myself into Nico’s apartment and set my keys on the kitchen table. The bakery downstairs had already gone quiet. For the first time since Adrian’s party, I wanted quiet without feeling trapped by it.
Then I thought of Marcus asking whether his father still had the video.
I had spent weeks wondering what Marcus had filmed. He had stood in that ballroom with his phone raised while I hung from the beam. Now he was asking a question I could not answer either.
The next morning, Marcus came to Maya’s office with Ruth. He looked exhausted. Maya asked me if I wanted to stay for the conversation, and I said yes.
Marcus sat across from me but spoke to the edge of the desk.
“I sent it from my phone,” he said. “A message to Dad. One video attachment. I didn’t trim it first.”
“Can you show investigators the message?” Maya asked.
“I showed Ruth what’s still on my phone. The attachment won’t open. Dad’s reply is there.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
Marcus finally looked up.
“He wrote, ‘I have it. Delete yours.’”
I remembered him filming while our father stood nearby with a drink in his hand. I had imagined that Marcus wanted something to laugh about later. I had not imagined him sending it to Graham within minutes.
“Why did you send it?” I asked.
Marcus rubbed his hands together.
“Adrian said people were going to take things out of context. Dad wanted to know what I had.”
“So you gave him the video.”
“Yes.”
“And then you deleted your copy.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the hum of Maya’s office heater.
“Were you trying to protect Adrian?” I asked.
“At the time? I was trying not to have him come after me.” Marcus swallowed. “I watched what he did, Anna. I know that isn’t an excuse.”
It wasn’t. His fear had left me alone in a room full of people. But if he could help investigators find what Graham held, I wanted him to do it.
Ruth said Marcus was prepared to give a formal account of how he had sent the file, including the contact he used and what he remembered about the time. Investigators could compare that account with records they obtained through the proper process. None of us knew whether Graham’s copy was intact or what portion of the assault the camera had captured.
“I’ll tell Reyes,” Marcus said.
“Tell him everything you remember,” I said. “Including anything you’re not sure about.”
He nodded. When he left with Ruth, I felt no rush of relief. I was glad he had chosen to speak. I wished he had chosen it in the ballroom.
Maya closed the office door behind them and asked if I still wanted to give Reyes the longer statement we had discussed.
“Yes.”
We had waited until I could review the medical photographs and the evidence we actually had, rather than trying to make every memory fit a piece of it. Maya had warned me that a fuller statement could mean questions I had already answered would be asked again. I wanted Reyes to have my account anyway.
At the station, I began with the hall outside the ballroom. Vanessa stepping into my path. The wine going across her sleeve. Adrian refusing to ask what the cameras showed.
Reyes let me speak before he returned to details.
“Can you describe how the doors were secured?”
“I saw Adrian order them locked. I saw men move toward them. I couldn’t see both doors from where I was.”
“And the number of times he struck you?”
I held the edge of my chair.
“I counted at first. I lost track after seventeen. Vanessa asked for thirty. I know the thirtieth didn’t happen. I can’t give you an exact number that did.”
Reyes wrote that down. He did not try to supply a number for me.
I described the pressure on my wrists, the sound of phones, and Celia turning away after she had seen Adrian strike me. I told him about Vanessa crouching beside me when they cut me down. I told him what Adrian had said through the guest-room door later that night.
Then Reyes played the short portion of the examined watch audio I had already heard. Vanessa’s voice said, “Thirty.” Adrian’s said, “Hold her still.”
My hands tightened around each other. I had prepared to hear it and still felt myself waiting for someone to help the woman on the recording.
“Do you need a break?” Reyes asked.
“Yes.”
He stopped the playback. Maya walked with me to the hall, where a vending machine gave a low mechanical hum. I stood beside it until I could feel the floor beneath my shoes again.
When we returned, I explained what the watch could and could not establish from the part I had heard. The hospital photographs showed injuries I had not been able to see on my own back. June’s clip showed me restrained but no strike. Elise’s hall video showed Vanessa moving into my path, not what happened behind the ballroom doors. Tess and Celia could each describe only what they had witnessed.
I used to think a truthful account ought to be seamless. Sitting across from Reyes, I understood how much I had been afraid of saying “I don’t know.” Adrian had used every uncertainty he could find against me. I had nearly begun doing his work for him.
Before I left, Reyes said Vanessa and her attorney were reviewing a correction to her signed accusation. Investigators were checking the messages she had offered against available records. Nothing she had told him had yet identified the person who used Graham’s office console at 2:24 that morning.
He also said prosecutors were bringing assault and unlawful-restraint allegations against Adrian based on the evidence gathered so far. Graham’s conduct was being examined separately.
I stepped outside with Maya and let the cold air reach my face. Adrian was not beyond reach. That was all I let myself believe.
The continued protective-order hearing took place several days later. I went in with Maya. Luca drove me but stayed outside again, just as I had asked him to do the first time.
Adrian sat across the courtroom with his attorney. He looked at me once. I looked toward the judge.
His attorney disputed my account and raised the payroll transfer again. Maya answered with the records we had: the money had gone to an LLC whose public filing named Adrian as managing member, and the authorization had originated from a workstation assigned to his estate office. We still could not identify who had used it.
The judge did not decide that financial dispute. After hearing both sides, she continued the no-contact and stay-away protections while the remaining matters proceeded. The clerk helped Maya handle the paperwork intended to keep my current address out of documents Adrian would receive.
Outside, I called Lauren Ortiz and arranged to bring the divorce documents to our next appointment. My marriage would not end because a judge had told Adrian to stay away from me. There were practical decisions ahead, and I wanted to be present for all of them.
That evening, all five of my brothers came to the apartment. I had invited them for dinner. Enzo brought bread from downstairs; Nico had to borrow plates from his own kitchen because he had left the cupboards nearly empty.
For a while, we talked about food. Then Rocco asked what had happened in court, and the room grew still.
I told them the order remained in place. I told them what Reyes had said about the allegations. Luca listened without interrupting.
When I finished, Nico pushed his plate away.
“He still goes home,” he said.
“For now,” I said. “I do too.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
Rocco leaned forward. “There are people who would stop taking his calls if we told them what he did.”
“Or we could go see him,” Nico said. “Not touch him. Just make sure he understands he can’t do this and sleep peacefully.”
Enzo shook his head, but he didn’t speak. Luca looked at me.
“I want him afraid,” Luca said quietly. “I’m not proud of that. It’s where my mind goes.”
I remembered the emergency phone in the guest bedroom and his voice at 2:13 a.m. I had asked for all five of them because I trusted them to come. I needed that trust to mean something now.
“I know you’re angry,” I said. “I am too. But I told you on that first call how I wanted your help. No threats. No visits. No favors called in to frighten him.”
Nico opened his mouth, then closed it.
“If somebody has evidence, give it to Maya or Reyes,” I said. “If you want to take me somewhere, ask me first. I’m not going from being controlled by Adrian to being managed by the people who love me.”
Luca’s face changed at that. He nodded once.
“You’re right.”
Rocco looked down at the table. Nico got up to clear the plates, asking before he touched mine. It was a small question, and it mattered to me that he asked it.
After they left, I washed the dishes and set my key beside the two apartment listings I had saved. I had not visited either place. For tonight, this door closed because I chose to close it.
Maya called just before I went to bed.
“Marcus spoke with investigators,” she said. “They’re pursuing the file through Graham’s attorney.”
“Does he have it?”
“His attorney has confirmed that a copy exists.”
I sat down at the kitchen table.
“Can Reyes see it?”
May you like
“Not yet. Graham’s attorney is disputing whether investigators may obtain or use that copy.”
I looked at the marks above my wrist. Somewhere, a video Marcus had sent his father still existed. I did not know what it showed. For the first time, I knew Graham’s lawyer was arguing to keep investigators from seeing it.
